Cooking Joy

I’ve been bad. I’ve cooked once in the past few weeks. Not good for someone who’s trying to get better at cooking. Still, my cooking excitement continues! These days I even get excited when I go shopping for cooking utensils and other home essentials. I spent an inordinate amount of time picking out a saute pan and I even salivated over a stainless steel set that I thought would fit in perfectly with my imaginary dream home. What’s gotten over me? I’m feeling a bit…domesticated. Hmm.

I’ve toyed around with the idea of signing up for a series of cooking classes. The ones that most interested me were the series on Asian Cooking and the Essential Cooking series at the Institute of Culinary Education . Why these two? Well, I count Asian food, particularly Thai, among my top 3 favorite types of food to eat (the other two are Caribbean and Italian). I often find myself ordering from my favorite Thai restaurant on average of once a week, pretty frequent for me. But then I decided that I could learn as much as I would in a classroom through true experimentation in my own kitchen. Why not make use of the cookbooks laying around my apartment? I mean, how bad could it be? I try it, it's either good or it's not. I'll still eat it. So, the cooking classes are on still on hold. For now, I’m still experimenting with seasonings (more to come on this). Happy eating!

Cooking 101

Cooking and baking are recent and developing hobbies of mine and I will be writing more about my attempts to perfect a dish and about other topics related to cooking. I will also be sharing flavorful recipes in upcoming posts. But first, you ought to know a little about my cooking history.

I once baked a pan of chicken legs and thighs that was completely flavorless. They were coated in some kind of green concoction that my mother liked to mix up and that I mistook for seasoning. Not the case at all! It could have been a colossal waste but bless my dear brother, he can eat anything. The rest of us couldn’t choke down more than one or two pieces but he didn’t let anything go to waste. In hindsight, this memory from my teenage years characterizes a lot of my cooking attempts to date: the best of intentions marred by mishaps.

During my teenage years, my mother would call me to sit in the kitchen while she prepared dinner. I wasn’t an active participant during these times, merely an observer. I think my mother believed that by having me watch her, I would pick up on the steps that she took to prepare meals. And while I did learn how to make some very basic dishes, I consider the overall experience a failure. I learn best by doing and frankly, I just wasn’t all that interested in learning how to cook at that time (especially since it took me away from my precious books). So, it’s ironic that I now wish that I had paid closer attention and asked a lot of questions then. Yet, on the other hand, I am having so much fun trying out different recipes, experimenting with seasoning and developing different flavor palates now that I can’t begrudge the effort it took to get me to this point. Lately, I set out to cook a dish not knowing which seasonings I would add to it and what flavors I could cull out of it. I leave myself open for surprises and I am satisfied if it’s at least edible. But on those occasions when everything comes together, it’s one of the best feelings in the world. Happy cooking!